


You're a Mean One, Mr. Nikiforov

by indras



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Ballet Dancer Victor Nikiforov, Cast Lists, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Christmas, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Romantic Fluff, The Nutcracker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:13:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indras/pseuds/indras
Summary: In which Yuuri is a fed-up barista and student and Viktor is a New York City Ballet dancer who needs to be taken down a notch.Read as: an amalgamation of at least three different AUs.





	You're a Mean One, Mr. Nikiforov

**Author's Note:**

> Приве́т and hello! This is my first work I've ever dared to post in this fandom. It is a large fandom with respect to fanworks, and I hope someone can appreciate my small contribution.
> 
> Tags will be added, ratings may change.

Yuuri Katsuki began dreaming of the perfect white Christmas as soon as the first cold spell hit his city. Maybe it was the drab days at work behind a coffee counter or studying in the library. Maybe it was the chill in the air that made Yuuri crave the warmth of another person with whom to spend the holidays. Maybe it was a product of his loneliness; starting fresh at a new university could be tough, especially for someone of a nervous disposition like Yuuri. Tending to keep close to the vest, he had made few close friends this entire semester, and those he had were just that — friends. He watched them all intermingle with a detached fascination, but he had little desire to date anyone he had met thus far. These relationships between students were silly compared to the perfect romances Yuuri sought out for watching on Netflix, and this fact had him slightly disillusioned.

But every time Yuuri did see pairs of students like himself walking through the campus hand in hand, he grew more bitter towards the idea of spending the holidays alone in a romantic sense, but even if he had the emotional capacity to go out with the intention to make, at the least, a possible acquaintance to tell his parents about over Skype, he worked too much along with studying, especially leading up to exams and the busy holiday season. And yes, Yuuri understood that it should have been merely a matter of attitude to have a good time, but the dark skies and constant cold had made him rather wistful in an increasingly unignorable way. Maybe it was his age. Maybe it was the fact that Yuuri believed, or rather knew he would never experience the idealized love he saw between couples on his tv shows or even in booths under the rosy light of the cozy coffee shop.

It didn’t mean Yuuri couldn’t dream of a man to brush the snow from his fringe, to take his own hands in his and warm them both with his breath, to hold him against his side while they made their way from shop to shop, finding the perfect gifts for their friends and eyeing ones for each other later and getting into romantic comedy-appropriate escapades along the way.

No. It didn’t mean he couldn’t dream, something he would deny if ever questioned by his friends, but it had been too cold as of late in the city for snow apparently, which made little sense to Yuuri, but as he peered out the window across from the coffee shop till, imagining snow falling down and collecting on the window sills, he found himself in a trance prompted by the lilting repetition of the song on the shop speakers.

_And, Michael, you would fall_  
_And turn the white snow_  
_Red as strawberries in the summertime_

The young barista snapped to attention with a start when a gloved hand rather roughly rung the call bell.

“How can I help y—“

“Can we make this quick? I have a curtain to make,” the owner of the hand spat in a rather heavy Russian accent which only seemed to emphasize the harsh tone.

Yuuri, taken aback, looked the man up and down closely. First, he noticed his fringe. It was the color of the snow Yuuri had been dreaming of moments before, yet this man was a young man in a blue tailored suit and heavy grey faux fur coat which brushed his calves. His lean but imposing figure was only further sculpted by the man’s light-eyed, scrutinizing gaze. Yuuri, frankly, was disgusted but had no time to respond before the man began reciting a precise order, as was the cliche for his type.

“I need a venti cinnamon soy latte,” the man said, holding his credit card at the ready. “Skinny. Ristretto. Quad,” he. Added. Staccato.

Yuuri wanted so badly to correct the guy. This wasn’t a Starbucks. Was Ristretto even a Starbucks thing? Or was it just a douche thing? But Yuuri kept quiet, dutifully swiping the card and handing it back with a tight smile.

“Can I get a name for this order?” Yuuri asked through clenched teeth.

“Victor,” the man uttered in a tired voice, running a hand through his hair, gently moving his bangs from his face, letting his hand graze down the darts of his coat from his neck to his shoulder where he left it in a position which exuded a certain confidence. What a performance.

Yuuri blinked, unamused. “Alright, we’ll whip that right up for you, Victor.”

“No whip.”

“Right.”

The barista pushed back his chair from the cash register. There was never a real need to have more than one employee in the cafe except on weekday mornings. On this previously serene Sunday evening, Yuuri worked alone, and he deftly prepared Victor’s choice beverage with no one behind the bar to walk around.

“And here’s your drink.” Yuuri reached over the bar but barely had time to set the cup down before it was snatched by Victor, who then cleanly swept out of the cafe, not even hindered by the pull-door that everyone else tried to push.

Yuuri sat back down on his stool, adjusting his glasses with a sigh.

 

Yuuri had no more customers that shift, yet he was still absolutely exhausted by the time he got back to the apartment he shared with another second year student from his university, a small but exuberant girl named Isabella.

Izzy and Yuuri had been friends since they met in freshman year, despite many differences in personality. Yuuri had also forced himself to believe he had a crush on her during a particularly confusing first year in college, but that was beside the point. Yuuri was out and confident. This was part of the reason he rarely had any chance at a serious relationship, along with his disdain for nightclubs. He perused Tinder occasionally, mostly during freshman year, to little avail.

Before Yuuri could even complete the turn of his key to the apartment, Izzy was flinging the door open for him.

“Oh good, you’re back early!” she said, ushering him into the apartment with a sweep of her arm. “I’ve gotten us plans for the night. Thank me later.”

Yuuri leaned his head back and groaned, letting his backpack slip off his shoulders onto the floor. “Isabella, I don’t know what you mean by that, and I don’t want you to explain it to me. I want to go to bed.” He brushed past her to the kitchen. She followed.

“I spent a lot of time getting these tickets for the both of us, Yuuri. Tickets for the NYCB are in high demand. I don’t want to hear it!” she said, punctuating each word with an adjustment of her tight dress in the reflection of the refrigerator.

“You’re only going because your boyfriend is in it— ”

“The Nutcracker is a holiday tradition!” she interjected.

“— and he’s not even an important part. Motherfucking Mother Ginger, for Christ’s sake. I have a whole month of holiday tradition and extra rude customers ahead of me, thank you.”

Isabella raised her eyebrows. “Rough day at work?” she asked, sitting beside Yuuri at the table.

“Oh, you should’ve been there, Izzy,” Yuuri wailed, letting Isabella brush her hand through his hair. “I don’t even know why he bothered me so much. He just had this- this air of absolute self-aggrandizement. Like, dude, no one gives a shit.”

Isabella mhm’d and uh-huh’d Yuuri into acquiescence, practically putting his arms into his coat for him as he complained all the way downstairs.

“Sleep on the way to the theater,” Isabella said. “We have a curtain to make.”

 

Though judging by his reserved and moody disposition you might think otherwise, Yuuri Katsuki was no stranger to dramatic arts. There was a reason he had come to New York, and it wasn't to be a barista. He had secured his place at NYU by way of a theater scholarship, and though he preferred to be on stage, he wasn’t particularly upset that Isabella’s obsession with dancer Jean-Jacques Leroy had scored him a free ticket to an early season NYC Ballet Nutcracker performance.

In Yuuri’s opinion, Tchaikovsky had some real bangers.

Nevertheless, he slouched in his balcony seat, holding flowers for Izzy’s boyfriend while she ran to the bathroom. He felt slightly out of place among the other attendants. He’d barely been able to convince Isabella to let him take off his apron and wash his face. He wore a plain white button-front shirt and the fitted slacks that his roommate picked out for him. Soon, just as Izzy returned, the lights dimmed, and it didn’t matter anymore.

Yuuri watched the first act with the same reserved fascination he had towards most things. He did admit, however, that he had never seen a ballet quite like this one. He had gone several times with his mother to shows, but now he understood the prestige associated with this company. Though the acting was of course subpar in the overture, and Clara was a bit heavy on her feet, the Corps piece which finished off the act left him on a high for the entirety of the intermission. The timing was so precise, it seemed to Yuuri that there must have been a single puppeteer far above the stage controlling each dancer with same strings. The soapy bubbles from the snow machines were a baptism.

These feelings only lasted so long. Just as Yuuri was sure he was about to reenter his romantic, snowy wonderland with Pas de Deux, thus came the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier.

It was as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head, far from baptismally, as he squinted at the tall, imposing man with the snowy blonde hair and the intense glare. Yuuri took off his glasses, rubbing them on his shirt before replacing them and trying again. No, still there. Fewer people had a more striking appearance than that man he’d met so briefly before. Yuuri knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was Victor. He barely noticed Izzy’s squeals when her beloved JJ was rolled out in an enormous hoop skirt with some odd twenty Polichinelles.

Out of a sheer desire to be petty, Yuuri resigned to trying his very best not to enjoy the rest of the performance.

He didn’t have quite the heart to follow through.

If Victor had been regal before, it was only emphasized in his dancing as Cavalier. Yuuri watched on as Victor seemed to outshine the ballerina performing the scene’s namesake role. Or maybe that was just how Yuuri perceived it.

He followed the long lines of Victor’s form as he moved with a grace unknown to Yuuri, seeming to need only two strides to get from one side to the next. Victor’s tights clung to the planes of his thighs in a white decadence. His hair seemed to glimmer more than the rhinestones on his partner’s skirt. Yuuri watched all of it with rapt attention, indulging in watching the tenuous yet steady stretch of the man’s legs as he held his fairy in a deep genuflection. If the Snowflakes had been a baptism, this was another kind of awakening, something spectral and refulgent.

Yuuri was still in his trance as every dancer took their final bows. People tossed flowers onto the stage, small tokens of worship for such a grand design as was this show.

“I’m going backstage. I want to make sure JJ gets these,” Isabella said, holding her bouquet of lilies close to her chest. She grabbed Yuuri’s hand tightly and pulled him along through the aisle.

“Izzy,” Yuuri began, “I really don’t think this is allowed.”

Isabella came to a short stop at a set of stairs, where two large men blocked the way. Speaking to them in hushed voices, Yuuri only heard something about a brother in the military and some sort of homecoming surprise as she gestured to Yuuri without looking back, and soon she was pulling him by the wrist for the millionth time that night down the stairs and around a bend until they were standing in front of the door to the male dressing room

“You lied to those guys up there didn’t yo—“ Yuuri was cut off by the door opening and two dancers walking out. He moved to let them pass.

Isabella squinted and shook her head. “I didn’t sit through this thing not to see JJ.” She rolled her eyes. “And don’t think I didn’t see how you watched those guys in tights walk up the stairs, sweetie.”

Yuuri threw up his hands in deference. “Fine, get us both banned from the Plaza.” He leaned back on the door, sighing, just as someone threw it wide open, causing him to stumble forward.

“Oh, my apologies,” said a familiar Russian voice as two hands steadied Yuuri by the shoulders.

Yuuri blinked hard. At this point he wasn’t sure what he was expecting as he took in a second up close look at Victor, a much different picture from earlier in the evening in the cafe.

“Coffee boy?” Victor asked in a light voice, laughing delicately. “I didn’t realize how affected you were by our earlier encounter that you would come all the way to our opening night performance!”

Yuuri shook his head. “It’s Yuuri, actually. And I’m just here f—“

“Yuuri, I joke, of course. Though I will say I am a bit offended you got my name wrong earlier. It’s spelled with a K. I plan to frequent your workplace a lot more this season. You might as well learn.” Viktor laughed again, smiling wide as he ruffled Yuuri’s hair. “And hello to you, Isabella. Your JJ will be out shortly. He’s a bit tied up in a skirt at the moment.”

Yuuri raised his eyebrows, stunned by the interaction and mildly annoyed by the juvenile treatment from Viktor. V-I-K-T-O-R. Viktor. The same Viktor who came into his cafe today in his expensive coat and tailored suit was standing before him in a tight black shirt and grey jogging pants, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Yuuri was starting to think this man’s egotistical affectations were simply an overbearing personality rather than a complete disregard for others. Or maybe both.

Just then JJ finally emerged from the dressing room, barreling right into Isabella’s arms, knocking the lilies onto the ground.

“My love! How was the show? Did you enjoy it? I know I was shorted this year for Cavalier, but maybe Mother Ginger was my real destiny anyway,” JJ said in a single breath.

Viktor snorted behind him, saying in an aside to Yuuri, “Maybe I should leave these two to it.” He walked no more than two steps before turning around. “Walk with me, coffee boy.”

Yuuri bit his lip, considering. He spared a glance back at JJ and Izzy, whose tongues were now a bit tied up, before shrugging and following.

**Author's Note:**

> The updating schedule of this work hinges upon its popularity comparative to other works, so if you like this please leave your kudos and any thoughts in the comments! I'll respond to all and try to have the next chapter up tomorrow as it's already underway.
> 
> Also, if anyone was wondering, Yurio danced as Fritz as well as in Arabian.
> 
> Otabek is the Arabian prince. This isn't typecasting, we just all know he's the only one with the upper body strength to hold Yurio up for that long.
> 
> Anyways I'll stop now. But I do have an entire cast list, just know that.
> 
> Спасибо!


End file.
